


Godzilla Vs. Samra

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Godzilla - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: 66 Seals (Supernatural), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Demon Blood, Gen, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4728674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam and Dean catch wind of boats sinking under mysterious circumstances, they have to check it out. After all, it might be a seal on the verge of being broken! </p><p>Or it might be Godzilla. </p><p>Whatever it means, and whether it has to do with the Biblical Apocalypse or not, this case is way out of the Winchester pay-grade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Godzilla Vs. Samra

**Author's Note:**

> One of the most self-indulgent fics I've written! This story borrows heavily from tropes and cliches of the old, cheesy giant monster movies, so be prepared, but you don't need to have in-depth knowledge of the genre. 
> 
> My apologies to Science- I am substituting kaiju-movie science instead. (But I have an excuse)

“Boats?” Dean says skeptically, through a mouthful of burger. “Seriously? That’s not our usual gig.”

He glances over at Sam in the passenger seat, who’s frowning at his handful of newspaper clippings, his own fast-food meal abandoned beside him. “Five vessels, from cruise liners to fishing boats, all sunk within a week. Went up in balls of fire.” He shrugs at his brother. “You’ve got to admit that’s weird, Dean.”

Sam’s got a point, but Dean still has to ask. “Yeah, but was there anything, sulfur, mysterious black clouds... something that screams demon?” As much as he’d like a non-apocalyptic case, keeping his feet on dry land and his ass in Baby’s driver seat is also kind of a priority, and a case about boats doesn’t seem to be promising that.

“Well, no. But get this- radioactivity.”

“Radioactivity?”

“Yeah.” Sam flips through a couple of his papers, double checking his relentlessly right facts. “All the wreckage, the survivors, even parts of the coastline are showing spikes in radiation that is definitely not natural.”

“So it’s not our gig.” Dean already wasn’t keen on getting involved, and he’s even less so if Hard Science is going to be threatening his badass image. Ghosts, monsters, hexes, even demons he can fight and destroy. But radiation? Decaying atoms and whatever else that could screw up his body past the point of supernatural intervention? No thank you.

“Not usually,” Sam counters. “But Dean, it’s weird, it’s dangerous, and we’ve never seen anything like it before. There’s a good chance that it’s one of the seals, so we have to check it out.”

Dean starts the car, even as he argues. “Don’t you think the angels would have told us? Huh?” Because he knows exactly what Sam’s shrug will mean. Who knows? The angels don’t like telling us things. He pulls the Impala out onto the road and points her toward the sea.

****

The hospital is crammed with people. Patients, survivors, and what looks like every sea dog’s family down to their second cousins. They worry and bustle and calm each other with cups of cheap coffee, and Sam and Dean have to elbow their way to the front desk. They flash their badges at a frazzled nurse, who points FBI Agents Fogerty and Cook to a closed-off ward.

Sam notices Dean holding his breath as they cross the quarantine line. The air smells like antiseptic and charred flesh, and while that’s not exactly out of the ordinary, it’s also (probably) perfectly safe. He knows this, and he knows Dean does too and the tight lips are just an instinct. Still, he can’t help taking the chance to rib his brother.

“Dude,” he whispers. “You do know you don’t breathe in radiation, right?”

“Course I do!” Dean hisses back, with the guilty look of a man who’s been caught. “It just stinks in here’s all.” Sam can’t help grinning. He stops in front of door 54. “Let’s get this over with,” Dean mutters.

The boy on the bed can’t be much older than twenty, although half his face is bandaged and the rest of his body is buried under casts and blankets and monitors. His one functioning eye blinks out at the hunters.

“You’re not doctors,” he rasps. “They said I could only see doctors, not even my family. Where’s my family?”

Sam glances over at his brother, who shrugs. Nope. Neither of them had any information on any family. “Look, Glenn,” Dean starts, double checking the patient file in his hand.

“Where are they!?”

“We’re with the FBI,” Sam says, stepping forward. “We know it’s not a good time, but we really need to ask you some questions about what you saw.”

This quiets the man down. He’s one of the panickers who simply needs to be listened to. Those are the best to work with. “So you know,” he says. “You know there was something out there.”

Well then. Dean’s hopes that this isn’t a case are probably being washed out into a radioactive sea. Sam nods his Reassuring Nod and says gently “tell us everything you remember.” He takes a seat in a lumpy visitor’s chair as the patient tries to find his words.

“It was dark, we were... we were having a celebration,” he starts. “Me and my fishing buddies. Some music, some...”

“Alcohol?” Dean suggests. He’s still standing, fidgeting with a clipboard and tapping at the cart of pills and bandages by the door. “Drugs?”

“I wasn’t seeing things. It was a good day, that’s all. Not a cloud in the sky. We were all admiring the moon, the stars...” Glenn winces as he tries to sit up. “All of a sudden something hit the boat. From under the water, you know? The hull started breaking up, water was seeping in everywhere, and then the whole thing caught on fire...” A few tears trickle down his face. “They won’t even tell me who survived...”

“And that’s it?” Dean says. “Sounds like you could’ve hit a rock, a... a whale or something...”

“We were anchored. And... and I saw something. A tail.” Glenn manages a shudder. “There was a giant tail... spiky.... thing. It swung up, out of the water, way out of the water, and...”

“A tail.”

Glenn probably would have nodded if his head had been, you know, mobile. He settles for a choked “yes.” The brothers trade glances. That sounds like what they need.

“Well,” Sam says, standing up and snapping his unused notebook closed. “Thank you for your time.”

“You’re gonna find it, right?” Glenn asked. “You’re gonna kill it?”

“We’ll do our best.” He can practically hear Dean judging him for making promises, but he doesn’t care. “Good luck,” he adds. “With everything.”

“Hey hey hey!” The patient interrupts them just before the door closes, his casts flopping slightly against the sheets. “Have you guys talked to Emmy?”

“Emmy?” Dean repeats. “No. Who’s she?”

“She’s my sister,” Glenn said. “She’s... if there’s anything crazy going on? She’s the one you want to talk to.”

****

“Dean, we’re taking this case.”

The fact that they’ve checked into a motel room is practically proof of that, but apparently Sam feels the need to assert himself more by saying it. It’s that power-play-esque move, plus Dean’s gut feeling about the whole situation, that prompts his counterattack.

“Oh yeah? And how come you’re so keen to jump on this one? It’s Ruby again, isn’t it?”

“What?” Sam shakes his head, his disbelieving grin plastered across his face. “No.”

“Sure. So tell me. Why this case?” Dean throws his duffle on the bed and crosses his arms angrily.

Sam sighs, running his hands through his hair. Dean waits patiently for him to finish, and entertains himself by rolling his eyes. “People are in trouble.” Sam says. “Plus, it bugs you. And it still could be a seal.”

“Yeah, and so could pop-up ads in pornos,” Dean says. “Because we’ve got just as much proof that that’s the case.”

“Oh, really?” Sam says. “And we need proof because the angels always tell us when a seal’s being broken.”

Dean doesn’t have a good response for this. Luckily, he’s doesn’t need one. “We do not believe it is a seal,” Castiel says from a far corner of the room, next to the refrigerator. Stuck between the instinct to attack any unexpected noise and desire to maintain his image as a capable hunter (since this isn’t a monster, it’s Cas), Dean ends up doing a sort of slow-motion turn, which looks ridiculous. He has no idea what Sam did, but his brother beats him to the “responding” punch at least.

“So what is it?”

Castiel’s lips purse, and he hesitates longer than is strictly necessary. His blue eyes flash with secrecy. At last, he graces them with “I don’t know.”

“Well that’s just great,” Dean says. “That’s really helpful, Cas.” He feels a twinge of guilt when the angel shifts his gaze down to the floor... disappointed. Can angels feel disappointment? If not, Cas is one hell of an actor.

“So are you just gonna whisk us away from here and give us another job or what?” Sam says, crossing his arms with such drama that he could have knocked over anyone standing nearby.

“No,” Cas says, but he still won’t look up from the floor. “We do not... know where the next seal is being broken. We are fairly sure that it’s not here.”

“So what-” Dean starts to say, but he’s interrupted.

“Keep working. We will send for you when we have more information,” Cas intones. He blinks up at the brothers and then... he’s gone.

Sam’s shit-eating grin practically deserves a punch in the face, but Dean does the responsible thing here and resists. “Okay,” he says. “Fine. So where do we go now?”

****

They split up. Dean moves inland a few miles to talk to Emmy, while Sam follows up their only other lead, a scientist by the name of Dr. Serizawa. According to the police, he keeps babbling about dinosaurs and destruction, and sticking his face where it doesn’t belong, so Sam figures that if anyone has a clue what’s going on, it’s him.

The only little problem is that Dr. Serizawa has been hanging out on a boat, doing research and dodging Important Investigation Vessels, so Sam has to rent a motorboat of his own to get out there. And by rent, he means steal, since the Rent-a-Boat owners had long since done the smart thing and run away from the coast, leaving a locked up shed full of keys behind them.

He has to squint against the salty spray and sun as he pulls up against the larger boat. The sound of his motor must have attracted the doctor, since he’s greeted by a suspicious, bearded, Japanese-looking man peering over the handrail.

“I told you already!” he calls down. “I am going to finish my research, and you have no right to stop me!”

“Dr. Serizawa?” Sam calls. “I’m not here to stop you. I just wanted to talk. About your research.”

The scientist’s eyes light up, and seconds later a metal ladder extends, and Sam is hoisted onboard the ship. “There is a monster here,” he says, with a gleam in his eye that Sam thinks might be a little dangerous. He clasps Sam’s hand earnestly, the callouses insistent that Sam listen to him. “We have never seen anything like it.”

****

Dean is more than happy to be as far away as possible from that radioactive ocean, and if staying on dry land means he gets to interrogate a chick, then he’s good. Glenn had practically confessed that she was wacko enough to know what was going on, so Dean’s thinking a witch, maybe, or, on the brightest side, another hunter.

Her house looks normal enough, blue siding, one story, nowhere-close-to-kempt garden. He knocks on the door, FBI badge ready. He is not prepared for the lab coat and goggles that finally open the door.

“What is is?” She says, a recognizable suspicious of authorities scowl forming in well-worn creases on her face. “I’m not buying.”

The badge stays in his pocket. Instead, Dean flashes her a charming smile and says “Emmy? Dean Fogerty. Glenn sent me.”

“Is he okay?” she asks.

“What? Yeah. Yeah, he’s... recovering. He said you might have an idea about what sunk his boat.” Dean should have been preparing himself for the obligatory question. “Or, you know, how to stop it.” In response, he gets The Frown again.

“I see. And you are...?”

“I’m a buddy of his. Kinda new. Kinda want to help, you know?” He doesn’t think she does know, but she nods, pushing the goggles higher on her short, dark hair.

“Glenn keeps trying to set me up with a date,” she confesses. “Although using a shipwreck is a new one.”

“It wasn’t just his ship,” Dean corrects. “Five of them. I’m thinking this is more than a meddling brother, and I should know. I am one.” He grins again. “So why would he send me here?”

“Because I am a scientist.” She’s already closed the door behind him, and is gesturing him farther into the house. Dean’s hand moves closer to the shotgun in his waistband, but he follows with a causal air. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“Nah,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

For the first time, she grins. “You will.”

****

“The military’s keeping it a secret,” Dr. Serizawa says, hustling out a table full of maps and charts and readings. He looks frantic, like a hunter on the search, but Sam hasn’t seen any traditional hunting tools, salt, iron, the works. “They’re saying freak accidents, sabotage, but they’re wrong.”

“So,” Sam says, because he doesn’t have the time to decipher all this raw data. “What do you think it is?”

The doctor eyes him up and down, apparently deciding that long hair, muscles, and curiosity make him trustworthy enough. “It’s giant,” he says, in a hushed whisper. “It’s...” He pulls out something from the bottom of his stack, a picture book, filled with dinosaurs. He flips through a few pages, past pachycephalosaurs and pteranodons, until finally he shows Sam a pastel picture of a dino Sam’s pretty sure never existed. It looks kind of like a T-rex, but with more powerful arms, and a smattering of spines down it’s back. The picture, rather inaccurately, shows it digging into a dead cow.

“A Godzillasaurus,” Dr. Serizawa says softly. “I’ve found samplings of skin, shadows under the water, and I’m convinced. It’s ancient. Prehistoric.”

“Wait,” Sam says, doing his best not to sound judgmental, even though he’s pretty sure the guy is cracked. “If that’s a dinosaur... They’re extinct.”

Luckily, the scientist seems used to this reaction. “Yes,” he says. “But it’s possible, oh, it’s always possible, that one lone specimen survived, deep at the bottom of the ocean, undetected for thousands of years.”

“The picture shows him on land, though,” Sam points out. “Nowhere near the ocean.”

“Yes, well.” Dr. Serizawa coughs into his hand. “It’s not, shall we say, a completely accurate source. But I am convinced, it all makes sense. A dinosaur survives at the bottom of the ocean, dormant, preserved under sediment indefinitely. Then the tests start. Bombs. Explosions. Nuclear radiation. Toxic pollution. They wake up the creature, and they change it. This thing is bigger than any dinosaur, and I can only guess more violent.”

“So... you’re talking about Godzilla.”

Serizawa’s face brightens. “Yes!” he says. “Exactly.”

****

“Science is like... well... I don’t really know how to compare it to things that aren’t science,” Emmy says, as she leads Dean down her basement stairs. They’re covered with bits of pipe, strange jars of stranger powders, wires, paper scraps, and takeout containers. Nothing that would suggest witchcraft or hunting, though, no pentagrams, shotguns, nothing. “But you start with a harmless idea, just one little thought, and think how bad could it be? Then you do some poking, and some zapping, and by the time you realize the answer is really, really bad, it’s too late.” She nods seriously. “Sound familiar?”

“Basically my whole damn life,” Dean mutters.

“So then you know what I’m talking about.” She bustles over to a lab table, which is covered in odds and ends making a reverent ring about what looks to be a sci-fi ray gun in the center.

“So, Emmy,” Dean says, looking around. He still sees nothing recognizable, it’s all equations and test tubes. “It’s pretty impressive down here.”

“Oh, it’s just what I can scrape together.”

“You wouldn’t have started this... science thing... all of a sudden, would you have? Like, within the last ten years or so?”

Emmy shakes her head like he’s nuts. “Of course not. When I was in first grade I invented an automatic rubber-band shooter. It was the start on my path to science, but I had to go to college, then a different college, and I’ve been tinkering down here for ages... science is hard.”

“Oh,” Dean says. Well, it doesn’t sound like a demon deal.

“This project started with recycling, of all things,” Emmy says. “I was just messing around with plastics and whatnot and then...” there’s that grin again. “Crazy.”

“So what, you can recycle boat smashing monsters, is that it?”

“Not quite.” Emmy pokes around at her ray gun, and then points to a fish tank across the room. “Watch.” The ray gun shudders and jumps and a blue light flashes from the gun part of it. “Oh, and stand back.” Dean jumps backwards a little extra as the light explodes across the room, the beam slowly hitting the tank. It’s enveloped in blue rays and then Emmy turns the gun off.

“Take a look,” she says. “It’s safe now.”

Dean approaches the tank with caution. The ray didn’t seem to have done anything to the glass or the water, but the fish... they’re a different matter. They bob around aimlessly, completely different from how fish normally move. As Dean watches, Emmy sticks her hand in and pulls out a fish. A damp but not slimy, not squirming, completely plastic fish.

“Dude,” Dean says.

“It’s plastic. I turned it into plastic.” Emmy hands it to him so he can feel the proof himself.

Dean blinks down at the fish. Yep, it’s plastic. “Why?”

Emmy shrugs. “I don’t know. Like I said, you get in too deep. I accidentally created a plastic ray, now I have to figure out how to reverse it.”

“You don’t know?”

“Of course not! That’s why it’s a secret. Nobody must know, because it could be used as a weapon.”

Which doesn’t exactly clarify anything. Dean is starting to feel really uncomfortable. “You showed me,” he says. “And I’m... who the hell knows who I am.”

“Yes, well, you were just lucky.” Emmy says. “I got bored, tired of secrets, you know. It’s nice that I don’t know who you are, though. It’ll make it easier to do this!” She’s back at her plastic ray now, swiveling it around so it points directly at Dean...

“Son of a bitch,” he says.

****

“But how?” Sam’s still desperately trying to decide why he’s even trying with this guy anymore. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because,” Dr. Serizawa says ominously. “I’ve seen it.”

“No way.”

As if the universe was determined to prove Sam wrong, Dr. Serizawa looks over his shoulder and points. “WAYYYYYYYYYYY!” he shouts in terror, backing up against the side of the boat.

Sam turns. And it is Godzilla. It’s not like he’s spent a lot of time watching the movies, but hell, everyone knows what Godzilla looks like. The giant teeth wedged into his snout, the giant spines protruding from his back, the scaled skin and incredible, incredible size. The monster towers above the boat, water cascading from its back, and then it roars.

****

What Emmy lacks in empathy for Dean, she also lacks in knowledge about his hunting skills. She is in no way prepared for him to throw a table at her in the hopes of breaking the machine, dive across the room to a bookshelf, and scramble out a window and into the salty air outside. He does just that, and escapes without being turned into plastic. She shouts after him, but doesn’t follow.

He’s not really sure what to do after that. I mean, she’s dangerous, yeah, but he’s also not comfortable with going back in there and shooting her just because she’s a wacko. He also doesn’t think the police would do a very good job with her. After all, she is clever.

Man, he hates crazy people cases.

He’s about to brush the whole thing off as that when a giant roar fills the air. It’s loud, louder than ever before, but Dean knows exactly where he’s heard that roar. “Son of a bitch,” he says, turning toward the harbor. “It’s Godzilla.”

****

Sam hadn’t known that boats could be smashed so quickly. One minute he’s staring at a monster out of an old movie with horrible special effects, the next he’s surrounded by splintered wood and water. Lots and lots of water.

Fighting to keep his head above the surface, he looks around for the creature, and sees that, as expected, it’s heading toward the shoreline. Damn. Dr. Serizawa and some other passengers have taken the boat Sam came in (so much for returning the rental) and are speeding away with it. Sam’s more than a little pissed off.

He does the only thing he can think to do, and that’s swim for shore.

****

Dean is pacing around frantically ear pressed to his phone as he waits for Bobby to get back to him when Sam walks into the motel room. His brother is dripping wet and looks exhausted. Also, Godzilla has made it to land, and although he’s lumbering slowly and causally, buildings are still being smashed in his wake, people are still screaming. Dean’s got the radio on in the background, although he’s not listening to its insistent pleas of “Everyone is ordered to evacuate the city immediately. I repeat, evacuate immediately.”

“My god, Sammy,” Dean snaps as soon as the door closes. “Where’ve you been?”

He gets a bitchface in response.

“Dude, it’s freaking Godzilla out there.”

“I know,” Sam says. “He leveled my boat.”

“How can it be Godzilla? We’re not even in Japan!” Which is what Dean had asked Bobby a minute earlier. He is still waiting for a satisfactory reply.

“I don’t know! I didn’t learn anything from Dr. Serizawa that I couldn’t see with my own eyes. And then...” Sam shrugs, “we were interrupted.” He strips off his sopping jacket and a damp layer of plaid before shrugging into a dry T-shirt.

“Yeah, well I didn’t have it easy either,” Dean complains. “Emmy McCrazyPants tried to turn me into the world’s best plastic sex toy using science.”

“What?”

“And I’m telling you, I don’t know what to think. I mean, hell, it’s Godzilla! But also shit! It’s Godzilla.”

“I’d go with “shit” if I were you,” Sam replies, as he finishes changing.

“Thanks, Sammy. Any more bright ideas?” He shuts off the radio. The incessant call to evacuate is getting old, and it’s certainly not helpful.

Sam shrugs. “It could be some kind of a demon or a shapeshifter,” he suggests, “A really strong one. In that case we could probably find a way to gank it.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Sam wipes his hands off on the bedspread and pulls up his laptop. “How does Godzilla get killed in the movies?” Even though he’s not looking, he doesn’t miss Dean’s tremendous sigh of exasperation. He holds up his hands in defense. “Well the only one I remember is the American one, and according to you it’s completely wrong-”

“According to everybody, Sam!” Dean rolls his eyes and flops down on the bed. “If you’d watched any of the real ones, you’d know that there’s not a surefire way to kill him. The original has this creepy-ass Oxygen Destroyer, which works on Godzilla but also on the inventor of the thing. A lot of ‘em he doesn’t even die, just kind of goes back into the ocean, and usually they need another monster, or a couple of them, to get him to do that. Hell, half the time he’s the hero.”

“Dude,” Sam says. “Can you be a bigger geek?”

“Dude, I could be you.”

Sam opts to ignore that comment, typing searches in his computer (like a geek). Dean takes the opportunity to grab a beer and a leftover burger from the fridge, stuffing his face because he’s bound to need the energy.

“Well that’s weird.” Sam says finally, squinting at his screen. “The original inventor of the oxygen destroyer was named Dr. Serizawa. Like the guy I talked to.”

Dean frowns. “So what does that mean?”

“No idea.” Sam shrugs. “Some kind of... reenactment or something? Maybe somebody’s bringing the movies to life?”

“Or maybe the movies are based on real events,” Dean says. “Kaiju- Japanese monsters- well they show up a lot.” Does he really believe Godzilla is real? No, but then again, most people wouldn’t believe his life was real. Many people do believe his life is fiction, as a matter of fact.

“Well we haven’t got much time to figure it out,” Sam points out, with a glance out the window at the wave of terrified people on their way out of town.

“Right.” Dean says. “The place’ll be leveled in a couple of hours if we don’t kill this thing. I’ve got a plan, you can knock yourself out doing research until I’m ready. So let’s try what we know, and let Bobby look for the rest.”

****

They can’t run against the wave of evacuating people, who have decided that, for safety reasons, they will clog the entire street and make it impossible for a couple of hunters (or FBI agents) to get through. And maybe they could have slipped through on their own, but not with all the gear they needed to carry.

So Dean does the only sensible thing.

“Castiel, I know this isn’t your thing, but if you want us to help later, come and give us a hand, okay?” Dean says to the air.

Sam’s off somewhere trying to call Ruby, but she’s not picking up.

So it makes Dean absurdly pleased when Cas shows up within seconds, even though he doesn’t look too happy about it. “I told you.” Cas says. “I was busy. This is not related to the apocalypse.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Dean says. “But it’s kind of the end of the road for these people, unless we do something.”

Cas looks around, taking in the screams, stomping footprints that nearly make the boys fall over every few seconds, and the wall of fire that’s sprung up to the south. He doesn’t look impressed.

“Seriously, man,” Dean says. “It’ll take, like, two seconds.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Two things,” Dean says, grinning. “One, take me and Sammy thataway.” He points into the distance, where the radio says that a military barricade is being set up. “Two, take my Baby back to Bobby’s.” he pats the Impala, having emptied her trunk of useful materials already, most of which are nestled in the bags on his shoulders. “I know how these movies turn out, and she is so not expendable.”

Cas looks confused, but he doesn’t complain. “Very well,” he says. The air shifts around them, and suddenly the brothers find themselves in the midst of a military hustle, facing the King of the Monsters himself.

“Woah,” Sam says, swaying a little as he adjusts to his new surroundings. “That was...”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Dean says. He glances around for Cas, but the angel is apparently taking care of Baby, and still isn’t about to help them. “Now come on.” He drags his brother across the clearing. “Find some of the shells for the tanks,” he tells Sam. “I’ve got the rest.”

“Hang on. Dean,” Sam says, stopping in that I know you won’t go on without me way. “We are not stealing a tank.”

Dean looks back with his I can and I will go on without you face. “Sammy,” he says. “We are so stealing a tank.”

****

They load the tank with salt, iron, and silver shells, and get inside, mostly through Dean shouting authoritatively at anyone who tries to stop them. Sam has no idea how he manages to get through, but he figures that the generals and soldiers have bigger worries on their hands. Sam tries to call Ruby again, but he can’t get any sort of reception inside the tank, so he gives up.

“Fire in the hole,” Dean says, slipping inside. “Oof it’s cramped in here.”

“I take it you know how to drive this thing?” Sam asks.

Dean flashes him a grin. “How hard can it be?”

It takes about five minutes, after he’s started the tank up, for Sam to understand how come the army in the movies never manages to actually hit the monster. Maybe, he figures, if Dean had been given any sort of training it would have been different, but as it is, the thing is damn hard to aim. The first shots miss completely, hitting random buildings and adding to the collateral damage. Dean swears each and every time.

But Godzilla is big enough that eventually one of the shots hits his mark. Salt explodes down his monstrous, scaly thigh, and Sam and Dean shrug. Not a demon, not a ghost. Unsurprisingly, iron’s not much better, and the silver seems to make even less of an impact. So it’s not a shifter.

“Now what?” Sam asks, looking over. They’re out of ammo, and have done absolutely nothing useful.

“I didn’t think this far ahead,” Dean admits. “I thought for sure...” They clamber out of the tank.

“Okay, so get this,” Sam says. It’s a wild, crazy shot, but then, what isn’t these days? “The original Godzilla was created out of fear and paranoia about the first atomic bomb strikes. It was supposed to scare people.”

“So?”

“So maybe, if this is a projection from the movies, we need to... I don’t know... not show fear?”

“Not show fear? Dude, this thing is like two hundred feet tall!”

“Exactly,” Sam says, feeling ridiculous. “So maybe we need to... stand up to it.”

“It’s not a playground bully, Sam.”

“No, but maybe whatever brought it out here is!” Sam sighs. “Look, if you’ve got a better plan, let’s hear it.”

Dean is, finally, silent.

****

At least they’ve gotten past the waves of civilians. Once they jump over the military barricade and get a few blocks into the demolished city, it’s easy running. Well, that’s if you don’t count the gaping holes in the streets, the dead bodies around every corner, the burning trees, and the falling chunks of concrete. Dean nearly gets nailed by a weather vane, and Sam laughs at him, but for the most part they don’t talk.

After all, what do you say when you’re completely nuts?

“I really wish we had a better plan,” Dean complains when they’re so close they can feel the rumble of Godzilla’s breathing through the pavement.

“Call Bobby.”

“I did! He hasn’t got anything yet! And as usual, your demon girlfriend is a no-show.”

Sam just snarls. “And your angel can’t be bothered!” he adds.

And then they stop. Because they’ve turned a corner, and come face-to-huge-ass-foot with Godzilla.

“No fear?” Dean says, with a scoff.

Sam doesn’t have an answer to this, so Dean swallows hard, and swaggers a little closer to the beast, duty-bound to put himself in the line of fire. He tries to imagine this huge, hot, noisy monster as just a ridiculous, low-budget suit. It’s not terribly effective.

“Hey Goji!” Dean calls up (and up and up and up) at the reptile. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

Godzilla roars at a passing airplane that shoots vainly at his face.

“I mean, seriously,” Dean says, and it’s a good thing he’s a practiced liar, because even though he doesn’t sound convincing, at least he can get the words out. “The city? That’s stupid. Fight someone who knows something about fighting, why dontcha?”

Godzilla’s tail knocks over a building a few blocks away.

“Dammit!” Dean shouts, stomping forward as though that would make any difference whatsoever. “What the hell are you you son of a bitch?!”

And then he does what is probably the seventh most stupid thing on the list of stupid things that Dean Winchester has done. (Okay, so he’s done a lot of stupid things.)

He punches Godzilla.

His fist is easily three times smaller than one of Godzilla’s scales, but Dean’s pissed off, and trying not to show fear, and that manifests itself as some sort of crazy macho facade. His hand sort of sinks in and pops out of the monster, who doesn’t seem to notice.

“Dean!” Sam’s yanking him back as soon as he realizes what his brother has done, and they get a block away before Dean finally manages to break free. “You’re an idiot!” Sam tells him.

“Yeah,” Dean says breathlessly. “Not gonna argue with you there.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Sam says. “It was a stupid idea.”

“No, no.” Dean shakes his head. “I mean, yeah, to both. But Sammy, I touched that thing.”

“And...?”

“Dude, it was rubber.”

****

“A rubber lizard, a crazy inventor... I don’t know Sam.” They’d gotten Bobby on the phone as soon as they could, and the boys are still crouched in the middle of a decimated street while they listen to him on speakerphone. “It’s something new, I’ll tell you that much.”

“So what should we do?” Sam asks.

“Well don’t try not being scared of it!” Bobby snaps. “It’s not gonna die from your stupidity!”

“Okay, fine. Great. But I don’t have any other ideas, and we’ve got to do something.”

“So get yer asses out of there! This isn’t a normal hunt.”

“Come on, Bobby,” Dean says. “We’ve still gotta see it through. It’s not like it’s gonna pick off ten people and go dormant, we’re talking massive destruction.”

“But do we have to kill it?” Sam asks suddenly. Dean stares at him, and Bobby would have been staring at him too if he hadn’t been hundreds of miles away. (As it is, the phone takes on a very judgmental air.)

“Yes?” Dean says, his eyebrows lifting up on his forehead.

Sam sighs. The thought had been building for a while now, ever since they determined that the monster was probably actually Godzilla. He hadn’t been meaning to speak it out loud, though. “I know it sounds stupid. But what if it is just some creature? Dean, you said sometimes Godzilla was a hero. What if that’s why he’s here now? Trying to stop Lillith?”

“How? By killing hundreds of innocent people and zero demons?”

“Look,” Sam says. “All I’m saying is that we can’t communicate with it, and it can’t communicate with us. Maybe we can just lure it back into the ocean-”

“Sam, you’re an idjit.” Bobby says. “Good intentions, but stupid. Anyway, I don’t think whatever’s going on here stops with the monster.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asks.

“Well, look at what’s been going on around you. Mysterious ship attacks. Panicked survivors. Crazy inventors. A doctor Serizawa for God’s sake! You boys are living through a hell of a lot of the repeating elements of giant monster movies. It might be an echo or a spell or something, but it’d be affecting the whole city, not just the monster.”

“Huh,” Dean says. “Any way to stop it?”

“No good ones,” Bobby says. “I had the notion of using a symbol, like a devil’s trap, but I haven’t found anything yet. There’s absolutely no reason why that should work, either, but...”

“What else have we got?” Dean finishes. “Yeah.”

“What about the plastic ray?” Sam asks suddenly. “The one Emmy had? If we’ve got to do something, maybe...”

“We blast him and turn him into a collector’s item? Use one of the story elements for it’s intended purpose?” Dean shrugs. “Could work, I guess. ”

“Look, I’m coming down there,” Bobby tells them. “You two investigate that ray gun. And be careful.”

“Aren’t we always?” Dean quips in the second before they lose connection.

****

Since Baby is safely back at Bobby’s (Dean checked, first thing after the older hunter picked up) the hunters have to run back to Emmy’s house. “She’s not even going to be there,” Sam says. “She’ll have evacuated.”

“If this is a movie, and she’s the heroine?” Dean says. “She’ll be there.”

These are the last words he says before he trips and falls flat on his face in a patch of grass. “DAMMIT!” he shouts, as his face makes unexpected contact with some dirt.

Sam has stopped running, but he’s also started snickering. “Have a nice trip?” he asks.

“Shut up.” Dean says. He pulls himself together, wincing a little at a sharp pain in his ankle. “What the hell?” His foot’s tied up by a tough, green vine. “Where did this come from?”

Sam looks over and his eyes fly around in his head. “Dean, don’t even try to blame it on something else. You fell on your face!”

“Yeah, and in case you forgot, Sammy, I don’t fall.”

“Oh, like you didn’t fall just now? Or that time in Idaho?”

“Sam, seriously. This is whacked out. There was no reason for me to fall, and even if I did?” He tries to stand, and has to settle for hobbling over to a fence because his ankle’s still tender. “I don’t get hurt when I fall.”

They take a moment to contemplate this.

The conclusion comes to both of them at the same time.

“Oh hell no,” Dean says.

Sam has started laughing again, doing a really poor job of keeping it together. “Bobby said they were using movie stereotypes,” he gasps between giggles.

“Shut your mouth right now, Sam, or I swear-”

“Dean, you’re the one who falls just for dramatic effect.”

“Dammit!” Dean says. “You had to!”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to carry you to safety,” Sam says, grinning. Dean throws a rock at his head.

“I hate that scene,” Dean mutters. “It’s stupid.”

“Yeah, but in this case...”

Dean looks like he’s about to violently throttle his brother, busted ankle or no, but he doesn’t get the chance, because something hits Sam in the head. “Ow,” Sam says, rubbing his scalp and looking at the ground for what had hit him. Dean gets it first.

It’s a little cardboard box for a toy. “Super Deformed Godzilla Buddies Finger Puppet,” he reads. “With candy.” He shrugs, and opens it up. He gets a little, hideously adorable Godzilla finger puppet, but no candy. Which is probably a good thing, since the packaging’s from 1999.

Sam looks in the direction it had come from, and sees a little chubby kid on a bike. “Hey!” the boy shouts. “You wanna know how to beat Godzilla?”

“Oh God,” Dean moans. “It’s the brat.”

“You know him?” Sam hisses.

“Annoying kids show up in the movies. Constantly. Think they know more than anyone else.”

“Well?” the kid calls. “Do you?”

“Emmy’s isn’t too far, right?” Sam whispers. “You go there. I’ll check out this guy. Who knows?” he shrugs. “He might help.”

“Too late!” The kid rings his bicycle bell and starts pedaling away. “Bye!”

“Hang on!” Sam shouts, and dashes away after him. “Yeah, I do want to know!”

Dean groans and rolls his eyes. His foot doesn’t seem to be permanently messed up, but he slows to a walk for the remainder of the way to Emmy’s house.

****

“Hey!” Sam shouts for what feels like the thousandth time as he finally catches up to the kid. If all movie children were like this, then he thinks Dean was being particularly kind to call him a brat. He grabs the bike’s handlebars to keep the boy in place as he catches his breath. “Hey there. I’m Sam.”

“Kenny,” the boy says, as though that should be common knowledge. “So you wanna know how to kill Godzilla?”

Sam nods vigorously.

“You’re gonna have to be strong.”

Sam winces, but it’s not like he’s never heard that before. “I can do it,” he spits. “I’ve-”

“Not like that,” the kid says. “That’s stupid. And it’s not strong.”

Sam narrows his eyes. Was this ten year old seriously judging him for drinking demon blood? Because it kind of wasn’t an option at this point. Also, how would he even know? He wouldn’t. Sam’s just being paranoid, the kid’s just being a brat.

“No, you need to fight him yourself!” Kenny grins. “Like Mothra! You can be Samra!”

Sam blinks. “I’m not-” he says.

“That tall?” The kid gives him a totally innocent smile. “Yeah you are.” He pulls out a lollipop from his pocket and starts unwrapping it.

That’s when Sam knows.

He throws his weight forward, toppling the kid and the bike to the ground, pinning them beneath his long limbs. “It’s you,” he hisses.

The kid starts crying. “Wahhhhhhh!” There might be actual tears welling in his eyes. “Sammy’s hurting me!”

“Shut. Up.” Sam is so not in the mood for this. “It’s all you.”

Kenny boops him on the nose with the sucker, the tears gone. “Oh. So you’re not being stupid now.” He vanishes, and reappears leaning against a nearby fence, looking much more familiar. Blonde, swoopy hair, horrible, smug smirk...

He looks remarkably like the Trickster.

****

Dean gets to the house and immediately crouches by the open basement window. It’s part instinct, part suspicion, part force of habit. “Dammit,” he mutters, because the plastic ray is clearly not there. The table sports a large bald spot where it had been sitting, and it’s nowhere to be seen, no matter how Dean cranes his neck. Well, at least Dean knows to expect an ambush.

Or not. An engine suddenly revs around the corner of the house, and he is on his feet chasing after it before he’s even fully processed what it means. It’s clear, though, once he sees the vehicle. The rusty pink station wagon, that looks a little like a playmobil reject, is pulling out of the drive, Emmy at the wheel. Her goggles are still perched on her head, her lips are pursed in determination, and the ray gun is buckled into the passenger seat. “No no no no NO!” Dean shouts, running after her, but catching her attention isn’t a good thing. The car jolts backwards faster, and she turns the wheel wildly in an attempt to steer herself away.

“No you don’t,” Dean says, starting a full on sprint after the car. He winces a little, but his ankle is only a little sore, and there is absolutely no way he’s letting her escape him.

She’s halfway down the road when Dean catches up, thank God for the car’s poor acceleration. He grabs the backseat door handle and feels himself being dragged along as the car picks up speed. He yanks on it, hard, and manages to get it open a crack. From there, he scrabbles at the inside, clutching onto seatbelt, cushion, plastic cup holder, what ever he can use to haul himself inside.

“What are you doing! Stop it!” Emmy is shouting, and the car swerves sickeningly along the road as she tries to hit him with a spare road map.

“No way, honey,” Dean gasps, as he finally jumps all the way in and closes the door behind him. “Why’re you cutting out, huh?”

“Why are you chasing my car?” she retorts. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No,” Dean says sharply, then realizes that he hadn’t really dialed down the threatening. He tries to lower his voice to a normal speaking tone as he says “I need to talk to you.”

“Well I’m getting the hell out of here,” she says. Leading Lady or not, she wasn’t an idiot. Dean starts to feel like she’d stuck around just long enough for him to catch up with her, for dramatic tension. He has to admit, if they’re following movie scripts, this is just as plausible.

And now she’s driving in the wrong direction, towards the ocean.

“Why?” she asks, giving him a sharp glance, before turning an incredibly tight corner to avoid a military barricade. The soldiers shout at them as the car speeds off, but that’s all they do.

“You need to use your plastic ray to stop Godzilla,” he says, figuring there isn’t much point in skirting around the edges of the subject. “It sounds crazy, but I think it can work.”

She gives him a dirty look in the mirror. “No.”

****

“I must say, it took you long enough,” the Trickster says, and takes a long lick of his candy. “I kind of miss being the only thing you think about.”

“I thought you were going to leave us alone,” Sam says, from where he’s crouched on top of a twisted mess of bicycle. He tries to stand, but the Trickster doesn’t seem inclined to let him. His arms strain uselessly, but at least he’s able to level his most horrible face at the being in front of him.

“The world ends, things change.” The Trickster shrugs. “But you, you’re still remarkably thick. Maybe even more so.” He narrows his eyes and Sam’s almost positive that he’s judging him on the demon blood now. Even though it’s still none of his business.

“I will kill you.”

“Oh, you will? That worked remarkably well last time.” The Trickster grins. “And the time before that.” Something in Sam’s eyes makes him offer up a little more, though. “So you want this to stop, Sammy? I’ll grow you giant, you take Goji out, I’ll fix everything.”

“Really subtle,” Sam says. “A giant monster.” The Trickster seems to have a knack for hitting him right where he doesn’t want it.

“Or the hero. Depends on if you die out there.”

“So if I win, if I kill... Godzilla,” Sam shakes his head. He can’t believe he’s saying this. “Then you fix everything.” A nod. “And if it kills me?”

The trickster shrugs, with an expression that, on him, could mean anything from you stay dead and the apocalypse destroys the world to I’ll bring you back to life and make you my love slave.

Sam stares around. He hates the idea of making a deal with this asshole. This super powerful entity that had killed Dean over and over and over...

“If you kill me here and now, and that’s a big if, Sammy,” it was though he was reading Sam’s mind, “all this that’s destroyed... stays destroyed.”

Sam’s lips purse together as he frowns. His eyes flick back and forth between the trickster and the toppling buildings not far off. He wonders how many people have died in that mess. “What’s the point of this?” he asks. “It doesn’t seem like Just Desserts to me. You’re just trashing the city.”

“The city had it coming,” the Trickster says flippantly. “And I was bored.”

Sam snorts in response.

“Come on, Sam,” the Trickster says. “Now I would argue that size doesn’t matter, but if you’re so determined to be big and strong that you use a demon like a Giant Slurpee... well,” he hooks a finger under Sam’s chin and grins. “You’re never going to get a chance like this again.”

Without waiting for a reply, he snaps his fingers.

****

“What do you mean, no?” Dean demands. “People are dying, the city’s being ruined-”

“It’s not my job to fix it,” Emmy replies, glancing around to make sure she’s got a clear shot down the road.

“You could be a hero,” Dean says, but his gut ties into knots as he thinks about what he’s asking. He wants her to risk her life to stop the end of the world, going on his authority and nothing else. It might not even work. If that doesn’t sound familiar...

“Or I could die, because if word of my weapon gets out, everybody’s going to be fighting over it. They’re going to take it, and make it worse, and one day someone’s going to turn a president, or a genius, or a whole country into plastic, and it would be my fault. I’m not prepared for that.” Emmy’s hands tighten around the steering wheel as she talks through her teeth.

Dean sighs, scratches the back of his head, and fails to come up with a good argument. He decides to go with a bad one. “I’m a reporter,” he says unexpectedly. “I know all about your invention, and once the media on Godzilla slows down, I could do a full write-up on you. A genius inventor who let the country fall.”

Her eyes go wide. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.” He wishes he had a notepad with him so he could write on it all reporter-like, but he settles for a determined, bulldog look. “Or I could write about Emmy the Hero.”

She glares at him with such intensity that Dean is momentarily caught off guard. Suddenly he goes tumbling forward as she slams on the breaks. They’re near the docks, still not close to the monster, and Dean realizes that she hadn’t been going towards the fight, she had been driving towards a different means of escape.

“You’re not a reporter,” she says finally. “They’ve come around before, and you are not one of them.”

Dean weighs his chances of being able to convince her otherwise, and gives up. “Okay, so maybe I’m not,” he says. “But I know that we can kill this son of a bitch, and I need your help.” She doesn’t look convinced, so he starts to get deep. “Choices like this? They’re impossible. There’s no way to know. Maybe your plastic gun will kill people. Maybe tall dark and radioactive will do it instead. You just have to do something and then you deal with the consequences.” The irony of him giving a pep talk on difficult decisions when he’s made some of the worst choices in history isn’t lost on him, but dammit! What else is he supposed to do? “It might not work, it just worked on fish before. But I’m telling you Emmy. We have to do something.”

There’s a loud thud from the city behind them. Dean turns to look, and his mouth drops open.

Godzilla is looming on the skyline, spines raised, his head tilted in a confused, defensive position. In front of him, hands closing into fists, hair getting stuck in the clouds, plaid looking not particularly threatening, is Sam. He’s just about as tall as Godzilla, and his whole body’s filled out to the correct proportions.

“I’m going to friggin’ kill him,” Dean mutters.

Godzilla roars, an echoing, screeching bellow.

Sam roars, and it sounds like Sam roaring except way louder and way deeper. Damn it all. Sam is roaring at Godzilla.

****

Sam feels like a bit of an idiot after he roars. He’s not really suited for roaring, and by now the Trickster and probably everybody in the whole city (including Dean) has heard him. But to be fair, he’s suddenly grown to twice the size of most of the buildings around him, as though he’s standing in a little model city, and he’s staring down a giant dinosaur-esque thing that’s bellowing at him. Maybe it ignited some sort of primal instinct in Sam’s throat, causing him to roar. Yeah. He’ll go with that.

Then he charges. Head down, shoulders extended, he tackles Godzilla around the waist. Godzilla roars in protest and lunges forward to meet him. They grapple for a few minutes. Normally, Sam is a good fighter. He had learned long ago how to throw almost anyone, and larger, heavier folk aren’t a problem. What is a problem is that his fingers scrabble vainly for a handhold on the reptile’s rubbery scales, that Godzilla’s weight is balanced so oddly what with the tail and the spines and his inhuman appearance that Sam can’t seem to knock him down, and that the hunter is not used to dodging rooftops and squeezing down narrow streets while fighting.

They stay locked together for a few minutes. Sam can smell the salty, almost musky smell of the King of the Monsters, and he tries not to focus on that. Nor does he want to pay attention to the way his cheek scrapes against the lizard’s belly as he tries to gain leverage.

He should have known that wouldn’t last. Godzilla roars again, right in his ear, and dammit it’s loud. Sam staggers back, hands flying to his ears as he tries to recover. But he’s only gone a few steps when Godzilla turns, and his ever-useful tail flies through the air towards Sam’s head.

WHAM!

Sam is down, face not-so-comfortably resting in the main office of an America’s National Bank. He thinks he inhales a couple hundred dollars as he grunts, trying to get himself to stand. He makes it to his knees, and then WHAP! It’s the tail again.

WHUMP!

SMASH!

Sam’s had enough. He rolls to the side this time, before he even attempts to get up. Godzilla’s tail crashes into the meager remains of the bank, and Sam has a chance to scramble to his feet. Blood drips down from his forehead, his nose, his ears, splattering on cars and windows and broken benches. He wipes it away (or rather, smears it across his face), and closes his eyes, wishing that Ruby was there. He could certainly use some backup.

****

“Dean, what the hell did you boys do?” Bobby snaps from the phone. Dean isn’t really listening, though, not that he even knows what to tell the other hunter other than Sam is fighting Godzilla.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, there was a kid...” Dean’s uncomfortably close to panicking now, and he knows that Bobby can hear it in his voice. “Dammit!”

“Well I’m almost there,” Bobby says. “Don’t let that kaiju kill you boys till I get there!” With that, he hangs up, and Dean turns his full attention back to the fight.

He yells when he sees Sam go down the first time. The second hit leaves him speechless, and he can’t force himself to watch blows three and four. His mind starts working, trying to figure out what the hell happened. The kid said he knew how to beat Godzilla, but could he turn Sam into an even gianter giant? How the hell does that work? He can’t think of anything that could do that... maybe it was radiation. Maybe Sam had mutated somehow... that’s how it always works in the movies, crazy as it sounds.

“Hey,” Emmy says. She’s gotten out of the station wagon to get a better view, and her eyes are starting to glaze over from not blinking as she watches the fight. “You know that guy?”

“Brother,” Dean answers, and, despite her incredulous look, doesn’t bother explaining anything else. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to.

“Huh,” Emmy says, and her eyes turn back to the skyline. “We can’t get a clear shot from here,” she says calmly. “We’ll need to get on the boat and shoot through the path of destruction Godzilla’s already made. I’m assuming you can shoot a moving target, since I haven’t done anything without careful measurements beforehand.”

“What?” Dean says, and suddenly realizes what she’s talking about. There’s a moment of my pep talk actually worked? as she opens the passenger door and unbuckles the plastic gun, hefting it onto her shoulder for kicks before she hands it over for Dean. Maybe, he thinks, this is just cause it’s how the plot is supposed to go. Who knows.

“You’re lucky I’ve got a boat.”

“Hell yeah,” Dean says, although it’s a little bit halfhearted, maybe three-quarters hearted, since he still doesn’t trust boats much more than he trusts airplanes, and if Godzilla turns around and returns to the sea, they’re screwed. Still, this is Sam and the city, and Dean’s not in the least prepared to back out now. He holds out his hands and takes the gun from the scientist so she can untie the speedboat and start her up. Unlike the station wagon, she’s a classy black and in good condition, although the paint job has definitely met the ocean several times.

Dean props the gun in between the two seats and holds on tight as the boat peels cautiously away from the pier and out into the ocean. “So I’m guessing all we need is one clear shot, right?” Dean asks, because he needs to say something.

Emmy shrugs agreement. “As long as we can get a clear shot. You ever shoot a gun like this before?”

“Not... exactly,” Dean says, because even though he’s shot just about every gun he’s come across, bulky ray guns that look like they belong in a sixties sci-fi movie are new. The ocean rolling under the boat as she crashes through wave crests looking for a vantage point might also be a problem. Dean swallows hard and wishes that he hadn’t eaten that burger back at the motel.

“Well I hope you’re a quick learner.” Emmy’s voice is light, but her statement is loaded. If Dean misses, he could ruin things even more than they already are, or, worst case scenario, he could hit Sam.

“You’d better believe it,” Dean says, forcing a cheeky grin.

****

The next bout of wrestling ends with Sam sprawled across half a dozen houses, which makes him feel incredibly guilty, not to mention sore. Well this isn’t going to work. He needs a new strategy. Escaping the tail of doom, he glances around wildly for something to use as a weapon (since the Trickster hadn’t bothered to make his guns and knives grow with him; of course he hadn’t).

The first thing he sees is a cement truck, abandoned in the middle of the road, a block or so away. He reaches for it as he stands, and finds that it fits securely in the palm of his hand, heavy enough to be satisfying, light enough that he can pick it up easily. Momentarily distracted, he stares at it, weighing it in his palm, and ruminating on the fact that he’s holding a cement truck.

“Just throw it already!” The shout comes from a nearby rooftop about level with Sam’s waist. He glances down to see Kenny, or rather the Trickster, waving cheekily at him. He really wants to throw the truck at him, but he knows it wouldn’t work. He’d just vanish again, and then Sam would be defenseless and uselessly destructive, and possibly dead. So he turns as Godzilla roars again, and lobs the truck at his face.

SMACK.

It’s the first real hit Sam has gotten in since the battle started, and it is incredibly satisfying. His eyes scan the ground for more projectiles. Most cars are too small to make any sort of impact, but he lobs a hummer and an empty school bus at the kaiju in quick succession.

SMACK.

WHAM.

But by vehicle number three, Godzilla looks more pissed off than injured, and he retaliates by throwing chunks of a building back at Sam. It’s a good thing the hunter has practice ducking, but he still gets concrete to his shoulder, and more to his shin, and it hurts.

“Come on, Samra! Get him!” Kenny shouts, and Sam thinks that he must be amplifying his voice, because even though it’s thin and childlike, he can still hear it loud and clear. “Quick, before he has time to charge it up!”

Charge what up? Sam wonders, before he notices Godzilla’s spines glowing blue.

****

Dean is going out of his mind. He can’t do anything. Emmy is steering the boat into the middle of the harbor with a fierce, can’t-think-about-it determination that Dean knows well, and he’s just holding on, trying not to puke in the water, and glancing between the gun and the battle. Neither makes him feel any better. He’s not very confident on his ray-gun-firing skills, and his little brother is a now a giant who is currently getting the shit kicked out of him by Godzilla.

He still has no idea why Sam is a kaiju, and Bobby’s shouted at him three times already that he’ll get there when he gets there, and no Dean he hasn’t come across any new theories, he’s been driving, so get off the damn phone! and he’s convinced that the air is full of radiation, so that (if he gets out of this alive) he’s going to die from radiation poisoning, or mutate into another monster and lose his taste in music. Thunder rolls appropriately overhead, and Dean groans because of course the cloud-covered sky is going to send a storm down on them. There’s no reason why anything should go the slightest bit smoothly.

He’s really not surprised when Godzilla’s spines begin to glow blue. He should have seen this coming. What he feels instead is the rapid descent of his stomach back to hell, and a steamrolling sense of desperation.

“Sammy you idiot!” he shouts, even though he knows there’s no way Sam can hear him. His brother looks over worriedly, as though he had heard, and Dean berates himself, since that lapse of attention is going to get the Samsquatch killed. “Damn damn damn.”

And then Godzilla’s mouth opens, his head tilts back, and even from this distance Dean can see the blue light flickering behind his teeth before the kaiju opens his mouth and lets loose a ribbon of radioactive flame. It whooshes through the air, torching building corners and probably melting windows and frying seagulls on it’s merciless journey towards Sam.

Sam leaps backwards, a truly unusual sight as he clears two townhouses while moving much slower than usual, as though his added size is weighing him down. The blast misses the bulk of him, although his jacket sleeve is not so lucky. It immediately bursts into flames. Dean winces, sure that any second now Sam is going to be a lump of charred flesh in the middle of town square, but Sam reacts quickly, shrugging the jacket off and beating at the sparks left on his arm. What’s probably miles of fabric billows down before it settles on half a dozen houses and sets them alight.

“That’s one way to take care of the laundry,” Dean mutters. But apparently Sam isn’t quite finished with the washing, since he suddenly grabs the not-burning-yet sleeve and swings the whole mess into the kaiju’s face. Godzilla roars in annoyance and tries to swat the burning whip away, but Sam keeps at it, trying to get the embers in his eyes or his nostrils, at least until the fire gets close to his hand and he drops the whole thing over Godzilla’s head and steps back.

“Keep going, keep going, run Sammy run,” Dean mutters, hefting the ray gun onto his shoulder and trying to focus the nozzle on the reptilian monster. “We gotta get this to work, we’ve got to!”

Unfortunately, Sam has other plans.

****

“Go for the tail!” the Trickster shouts through what sounds like a mouth full of candy, and Sam hates to admit it but he has a point. Godzilla’s tail is thrashing dangerously behind him as the monster’s attention is focused elsewhere, and so far it’s been one of Godzilla’s most useful assets. Since Sam has no hope (or desire) to grow a tail of his own, he needs to turn that thing into a weakness instead. So he lumbers behind the lizard and reaches down to grab his tail. The spines aren’t exactly good for the skin of his palm, but he resists the urge to let go and instead lifts the tail up, trying to put Godzilla off balance.

He must not be as heavy as he thought, or anchored as thoroughly, or, despite being slammed repeatedly, he must have underestimated the strength of the monster, because as soon as Godzilla realizes what’s going on, he swings his tail around with the full force of his body, and Sam goes flying with it. He slams into the street shoulder-first, and his cheek crashes into someone’s Ferrari, twisted metal working it’s way towards his cheekbone. He hears yet another deafening roar, and wonders if he’ll ever hear anything else. Maybe he won’t have to complain about Dean’s incessant choice of music anymore... which begs the question of where is Dean? Shouldn’t he be showing up with a plastic gun blazing, turning everything into toys?

And speaking of guns, where the heck is the military? He hasn’t felt tank shells or heard muffled orders of attack or retreat since he’d gotten this way, but they had definitely been there before...

“Earth to Samra, earth to Samra,” he hears the Trickster calling, just in time for his head to be flattened back to the ground by a giant lump of concrete.

He feels a low groan come out of his mouth, and tastes his own blood against the back of his teeth. When he tries to push himself to his feet, his head spins and his arms give way, and he collapses back onto the asphalt.

It’s over. Sam’s not going to be able to get up, not right now. He hears the Trickster whining “Get up, Samra, get up!” but he can’t manage it. Not now.

The ground shakes as Godzilla steps closer. Closer. Then there’s a rush of air, a crackle of energy, and he knows that the kaiju is charging up his atomic heat ray again. He tries to push himself back up, but there’s no use.

He is so not ready to be char-broiled.

****

The only, only good thing about Sam being flattened to the ground is that Dean has a clear shot at Godzilla. He hefts the gun higher on his shoulder, preparing for a recoil, and aims at the kaiju. “Now!” Emmy shouts. He pulls the trigger.

There is no recoil. This is some freaky gun, but the blue light cascades from the front with very little physical sensation, and shoots over towards the battle. Dean tries to keep it level, but it’s not good enough. The beam angles across the city and smacks into a building to the left of Godzilla. It shudders a little, unless that’s just Dean, but doesn’t seem to change.

“It only works on organic material,” Emmy explains.

Dean sighs and aims again. The gun is hot against his collarbone, even through his multiple layers of clothes. He shoots, this time preparing for no recoil, and the beam flies low along the ground toward’s Godzilla’s feet.

It misses. Dean has no idea how, but the monster takes a step in the wrong direction and the ray dissipates against a pile of rubble behind him. Dean bites back a swear, and readies for a third shot. The gun is burning against his shoulder now, and he looks over at Emmy to see if she’s noticed. She’s biting her lip worriedly, staring at the gun and listening to the weird humming noises it’s making. “That’s not a good sound...” she says.

“What the hell?” Dean shrugs it off and very nearly drops it in the ocean. “It’s not gonna explode, is it?”

Emmy just shrugs helplessly in response. “I’ve never used it so much all at once,” she confesses. “It might.”

“Great. Just great.” Dean takes a great breath in, before lining up to take another shot. He really should let it cool down or something, but the fact is that Godzilla is beating his brother’s brains out and if he waits there will be no point to shooting.

Whzzzzzzzzap.

This time the beam flies straight and true, hitting Godzilla’s flank. The humans watch in breathless anticipation as a shiny sheen of grey starts at the point of impact and starts spreading outward along Godzilla’s leg, smoothing out the scales and filling the air with the smell of burning plastic.

“It’s working!” Emmy cries.

Godzilla roars, unhappy about the sudden changes in his body composition. and scrapes at his leg. His claws cut deep grooves into the sheen, apparently scraping away the ray’s progress so far.

“It’s not working,” Dean says. The plasticky layer has stopped growing, it might even be shrinking, and Godzilla still seems simply annoyed. Dean pulls the trigger again. Maybe two clean shots will work.

The gun promptly bursts into flames.

Dean and Emmy both scream at the fire in the middle of the boat. It sizzles and hisses angrily, and the smell of burning plastic is nearly unbearable. Dean grabs the not flaming parts and tosses the whole thing into the sea, where it sputters a moment, and then slowly sinks.

“Oh, my God,” Emmy says, her eyes wide as she watches her life’s work vanish into the water.

Dean’s eyes go back to the monster he has no way of stopping. The plastic ray may have bought Sam some time, but that’s all. Already Godzilla seems to have forgotten about the weapon, and is turning his attention back on Sam.

“I guess it’s for the best,” Emmy whispers at the ocean, really inappropriately, Dean thinks. “There are some areas that science should never touch.”

“Seriously?” Dean says. “Now?” Godzilla’s spines are lighting up slowly, as if he’s savoring the charge, and his mouth starts glowing blue.

“Godzilla was created the same way,” Emmy continues, oblivious. “A scientific experiment taken to horrible levels. I guess we’re paying the price now.”

Dean groans and tries to ignore her scientific epiphany. Sure, it may be important to her life, but he couldn’t care less, and Sam dying as a lesson for science is about the worst thing he can think about right now. He watches as Godzilla’s atomic breath reaches it’s peak....

Dean blinks. At first he thinks maybe he’s hallucinating, because there are stripes of light shining on the dark and ominous rainclouds that have no reason to be there. They make some sort of a pattern that looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it. Then he thinks maybe it’s the angels because it is kind of a glowing light from heaven.

And then Godzilla freezes in place, blue sparks still bristling around his mouth as though a movie has been paused. A voice booms out over the entire city, along with the sound of slow clapping. “Oh, that’s clever. That really is.” It’s not Sam, who’s still unconscious, but Dean knows he’s heard it before. “It’s also cheating, but hey, I’m good with that.”

Dean blinks, and then he’s not on the boat anymore.

****

Sam opens his eyes, fully expecting to be dead. He’s not. His eyes aren’t crusted in with blood and the skin on his face seems intact, although his head is pounding and his ears are ringing with monster roars. There’s still asphalt beneath him, but it’s the right size and stretches off in all directions, and his foot doesn’t seem to be lodged in a restaurant any more.

Slowly he sits up, blinking at the sun, the normal-sized things, and the lack of smoke and debris. The first thing he sees is the city, all put back together the way it was when Sam and Dean had first arrived. Before they had arrived.

Then his ears settle down enough for him to hear snatches of conversation behind him. He turns and sees Dean and Bobby standing around Bobby’s truck. Well, Dean’s not so much standing as shouting his lungs out at the Trickster, who’s lounging on the trucks’s hood. Bobby’s got his face in his hands, as though he can’t believe his boys could be such idiots that they’ve crossed paths with the same trickster three times.

“You? Dammit!” Dean spits. “What the hell, man, don’t you think you’ve done enough? Can’t you leave us alone you dickless little shit?” He paces forward, hands clenching into fists and murder in his eyes. Apparently Dean thinks he needs to get angry on Sam’s behalf, (he doesn’t even remember dying a hundred times) which is a little bit annoying. After all, Sam did get angry the first time around, and it ended with him fighting Godzilla. So he does his best to call his brother off before he ends up turned into a slug or something.

“Hey,” he says, and then a little louder “Hey!” because his voice sounds alien. Weak and muffled and hoarse.

“Sammy!” Dean turns around, the anger not quite gone but at least receding into his eyes. He shoots the Trickster another burning glare, before kneeling by Sam’s side, brushing the hair off his face and checking for battle damage.

“I’m okay,” Sam says, and physically, yes he is. The Trickster seems to have repaired any lasting wounds, although a dull ache still lurks in his bones. He wishes that Ruby was around, and not still out hunting some lead. He knows that just a taste of iron and sulfur sliding warm down his throat would help.

“Dude, you’ve been taller than me for ages,” Dean says, in the strangled sort of way he has when he’s forcing himself to crack a joke. “That was totally just rubbing it in.”

“So,” Sam says, ignoring the comment. “How did... how did I get out of that? I thought for sure it was going to be Sam-burgers all around.”

“Bobby and his bat signal,” Dean says, grinning. That doesn’t make much more sense than anything else that’s happened, until Sam looks over at the older hunter who’s patting a giant spotlight proudly. The lens is covered in duct tape, leaving only a series of lines for light to shine through.

“Beamed the kanji for “The End” up onto the sky,” Bobby explained. “It shows up at the end of every Japanese movie. I figured since it was all playing out like a film, I might be able to end it like one.”

“Seriously?” Sam huffs out a laugh.

“It was a good idea,” the Trickster says. He licks something off his fingers and shrugs. “I decided to give the win to you guys.”

“Thanks?” Sam says cautiously. He doesn’t add for nothing or anything snarky to the end of it, because no matter how much the Trickster deserves it, neither he nor Dean is going to be able to lay a finger on him, and Sam would really rather just get on with his life and forget the whole thing. He can submit to those moments when utter hatred twists his lungs into knots for the sake of never having to go through that again.

“But how did you know it would work, Bobby?” he croaks instead. The old hunter sighs.

“I didn’t,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It was a damned lucky guess. My second plan was getting Dean in a grass skirt and trying to summon Mothra.”

Dean goes immediately pale. “No,” he says firmly. “Oh my God, Bobby, no! Don’t say that!” Sam can’t help chuckling at his obvious distress, at least until he notices the mirthful, sneaky grin spreading across the Trickster’s face.

“Oooh,” he says. “I like that, too. Maybe I was a little too easy on you.”

“No,” Dean repeats, turning to the blonde man. “Absolutely not!” Sam doesn’t really think that this is the best way to deal with the Trickster, but at least Dean doesn’t find himself stripped of his clothes.

“Ah, give it a break,” Bobby says. “Stop being so childish, all of you.” He reaches into the trunk of his car and hefts out a wooden stake. Sam shouldn’t be surprised. That’s Bobby, always prepared. “Now do you wanna tell me what you were doing to these poor boys, or should I try to stop your heart? Again.”

“Oh, please,” the Trickster says, his lip curling in distaste as he stares down the stake. “I wasn’t even planning on leaving so soon.”

“Then spill it,” Dean says.

The Trickster sighs. “Maybe next time,” he says. “I should be going. Catch ya later!” He gives Sam an exaggerated this is a pain in the ass look, and disappears suddenly.

“What,” Dean says, “was that all about?” All Sam can do is shrug helplessly in response.

****

Bobby chews them out, Sam doesn’t seem to be hurt, and when Dean checks the papers he realizes that none of the original boats have been sunk and the area’s radiation levels are back to normal. It was as though the Trickster had simply wanted to play- maybe he’d been up too late watching monster movies or something. Whatever.

He does decide to go check on Emmy, to see if she remembers anything. She answers the door with a confused frown and simply asks if Glenn sent him, because he’s always trying to set her up.

“Hey,” Dean says, as she closes the door on him. “Ever hear of a ray that can turn flesh into plastic?”

She gives him the you’re completely mad look that he was expecting, and slams the door in his face. Well, that’s one less thing he has to worry about.

He’s driving back to the motel in Bobby’s truck, and kind of wishing after all this that he hadn’t asked for Baby to be sent away, when he glances at the passenger seat and sees Cas.

“Dammit!” he shouts. “Do you have to show up like that?” Because even if seeing the angel isn’t an unpleasant thing, he could do without the side order of Heart Attack.

“Did you solve this problem?” Cas asks, squinting out the windshield as though he might catch a glimpse of the answer.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “But why do you care? I thought it wasn’t angel biz.”

“No,” Cas agrees. “I simply wanted to make sure you were successful.” His head tilts as he examines the city Dean drives through. “I thought the monster had caused more permanent destruction.”

Dean shrugs. “He did, then he fixed it. It’s one hell of a crazy story.”

“I see.” Dean opens his mouth to start explaining it, they’ve got a little time at least, but when he looks over, Cas is gone again. He shakes his head and snorts. Angels. They’re completely weird.

****

Sam is brushing his teeth and trying to forget about the Trickster, again, (seriously, why are his memories the only ones that don’t get erased?) when the sight of a bratty little kid sitting on the toilet tank dashes his hopes and dreams completely.

“What are you doing here?” he says wearily, before pausing to spit into the sink.

“Kenny” pulls a bag of Skittles out of his pocket and chews thoughtfully on a few. “I was wondering if you got the message,” he says. “Normally I hate spelling it out, but I think you need it.”

“What message?” Sam asks. “If you mean that science-is-dangerous shit that Dean mentioned-”

“No no no no no,” the Trickster groans, leaning his head back so it hits the wall. “This is why I needed to show up.”

“So?” Sam purses his lips, hands on hips and stares the kid down.

The Trickster rolls his eyes. “So how did you like being big and strong, Samra? Was it everything you hoped and dreamed?”

Sam sneers in response.

“Because it seemed to me like there was a lot of collateral damage. Plus, you still got your ass kicked.” He shrugs. “Oh well, to each his own, I suppose. It’s a good thing no one stayed stepped on this time.”

“Get out.” Sam says. He realizes that if even the Trickster has this strong of an opinion on it, then yeah, the demon blood might not be a good thing. Ruby had prepared him, though. She had said that no one would understand how important it was. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

“Your loss,” the kid sighs. “But I have got a souvenir for you.” He waves at the sink where a plastic Godzilla figure appears out of nowhere. “I wouldn’t throw it out if I were you. Collector’s item.” He tosses his head back and pours the last of his Skittles into his mouth before he disappears.

Sam looks at the plastic toy, with it’s painted eyes and molded scales, and throws it across the room.

****  
“Time to pack up, eh, Sam?” Dean calls, sauntering in the motel door. “Bobby said he’ll give us a lift back to his place, and we can pick up the car.”

He stops when he notices that Sam is just standing in the room with a smile on his face. That’s weird. It shouldn’t be, but it’s weird.

“Hey Sam?” he ventures. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, blinking. “It’s just... Dean, we fought Godzilla.”

Dean shrugs. “Yeah, I guess you could say it was a pretty big day.”

It’s a horrible joke. It shouldn’t even be classified as a joke. But when Dean’s eyes meet Sam, suddenly it’s all he can do to stop himself from laughing. Sam doubles over too, and maybe it’s the stress of the job, but he’s in hysterics. Dean starts wheezing, and then laughing, and it seems impossible to stop.

He realizes that this might be a final calling card, courtesy of the Trickster. After all, didn’t a lot of those movies end with a ridiculous amount of fake laughter? The thought just makes the whole situation even funnier.

“D- Dean...” Sam gasps, clutching his stomach. “Why- why...” His inquiry dissolves into another fit of giggles.

A minute later, as abruptly as they had started, the brothers stop laughing. They blink at each other, with their red, scrunched-up faces, and frown. “That was weird,” Sam says.

Dean shrugs. “At least it’s over.” He notices a plastic kaiju figure on the floor of the motel and scoops it up. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Hey Dean?” Sam says, as he hoists his bag over his shoulder. “No more monster movies for a while, ‘kay?”

“You got it, Sammy,” Dean chuckles as he saunters out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


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